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kevinsky

80 karma · joined January 12, 2021

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kevinsky··on David Rumsey Map Collection
So many maps they need an AI agent to help you find the obscure ones
kevinsky··on Vast Space – the artificial gravity bet that could unlock deep space
I did not see any how to on the idea of artificial gravity. Centripetal motion will do the job but they seemed to claiming a much bigger idea. But how...
kevinsky··on The End of Tt-Rss.org
Liked the product. The developer's blog post sounds they feel burned out and not appreciated. Might be due to their take it or leave it attitude.
kevinsky··on Ask HN: What would you do with a year off?
Participated in beta testing for a few computer games. Did some localized translation for these games. Looked for work.
kevinsky··on Officials believe Baltic cable damage caused by accidents not Russian sabotage
From the article here https://archive.ph/bUsFH#selection-1451.0-1451.314 "At least two of the ships suspected of causing damage appear to have dragged their anchors 100 miles or more across seafloor. A ship that dropped an anchor by accident, Toveri said, would immediately be dragged so noticeably off course that crews would scramble to bring the vessel to a stop and assess the damage." The most recent ship accused of this type of damage was also loaded with spy/electronic/surveillance gear. Once is an accident, twice is unusual, three times.....
kevinsky··on Ore to Iron in a Few Seconds: New Chinese Process Will Revolutionise Smelting
Show me that it can scale then we'll see. So many announcements and promises are based on little tiny demonstrations on a lab bench.
kevinsky··on Why or how do you trust home security (camera) setups?
All my cameras use wired access to a dedicated VLAN with no access to any other compute/IOT devices. I tried to pick a vendor that keeps the video camera footage in my country but that is something few vendors discuss and with the ubiquitous cheapness of AWS S3 it's hard to verify where your data is. I also chose not to have any cameras inside the home as a privacy measure. When using the web access tool I changed the default password and go through the users to remove people who no longer require access (house/pet/kid sitters)
kevinsky··on Some Bitwarden users are not enjoying the new UI/UX
I am getting used to good products becoming worse for reasons that are never explained. As long as I am not seeing ads in the interface this is still better than forgetting a password.
kevinsky··on The Warlord of Saturn's Moons
Broken pagination for me too
kevinsky··on Join the Canadian Intelligence Agency: Talent and Startup Funding Opportunities
Not associated with any Canadian government initiative.
kevinsky··on Eco: Build a civilization where everything you do affects the environment
Users who paid for the game are not happy about the addition of in game micro transactions
kevinsky··on Watching "Grizzly Man" with a bear biologist
Best quote from the article "It doesn’t sound like they needed him as much as he needed them." Bears don't need people, just leave them alone.
kevinsky··on What Stack Overflow can do to get back their significance
They would be more relevant if the hostile or snarky users were effectively quietened.
kevinsky··on [dead]
It's back up!
kevinsky··on The Death of Deloitte: AI-Enabled Services Are Opening a Whole New Market
This article indicates that data migrations could be done by or assisted by AI. Having done a number of them I am skeptical as most of the time I end up working with crufty stuff that is out of support. Sometimes, by the time the client is ready to migrate, the infrastructure team will tell you "We don't turn that server off as we're not sure it will boot again". I'm not even going into the custom code written by too-clever people who were short on time. That kind of code is difficult to parse for intent and can take some time and intermediate steps to solve.
kevinsky··on Google introduces new security requirements for bulk email senders
Long overdue and not accompanied by any explanation of why their staff use Titan Keys to authenticate but you can be anyone from a Gmail address.
kevinsky··on End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App
I migrated to 2FS as I wanted to keep my MFA secrets separate from my BitWarden passwords. It does require some technical knowledge but the how to was thorough and is found here https://gist.github.com/gboudreau/94bb0c11a6209c82418d01a59d...

Best to get it done quickly before they prevent you from downloading the older version that had the debug console

kevinsky··on End of General Avalailability of the Free VSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x)
Anticipated as soon as the buyout was approved. It's so long VmWare, hello Proxmox for me
kevinsky··on Ask HN: Anyone else migrating off VMware?
Keeping my Dell hardware which is no longer supported by VmWare Esxi and moving to Proxmox. Goals: easier backups and better ups integration
kevinsky··on Rclone syncs your files to cloud storage
I have been using this for years with my cloud provider and this is a rock solid application. My only wish is that the logging could have a sweet spot in the middle where it is not verbose but does show the names of the files changed
kevinsky··on Ask HN: What's your experience with stored procedures-heavy systems?
Yes, looking backwards PL/SQL code looks and acts like an API to the data. At Oracle conferences they will tell you that keeping your business logic in stored procedures means you don't have to duplicate it if a second application wants access to your data.

It all seems quaint now but the last time I built a web app with Entity framework and Oracle the EF part worked fine for simple CRUD operations but for complicated reporting and analysis stored procedures and views worked extremely well.

It is all about where you want your business logic. You can put it in the front end or the database or anywhere inbetween but the real test is whether it is documented, commented and easy to understand.

kevinsky··on Ask HN: Tips and hacks for dealing with LinkedIn recruiters
I am constantly contacted by recruiters who just want to talk about their latest thing. An email won't do, it has to be some of my valuable time. You cannot deal with them unless you know what your priorities are. I have three criteria for work: how much it pays, is it remote, can I do it.

Few recruiters will lead with how much it pays so I just tell them what my hourly range is for that type of work. Very few ever follow up and the ones that do are more likely to represent real work.

kevinsky··on Ask HN: Why is Oracle still the best database?
It is the best database if you are a bank, military or very large company who is already using it. Even in large government departments where I do contract work no one, absolutely no one, ever says "Why don't we use an Oracle database for our new application". If you are a large company and pay enough in licensing fees you can get great support and it plays well with other Oracle acquisitions like PeopleSoft. Some of the support tooling is a nightmare to patch (looking at you OEM!).
kevinsky··on Unpopular Opinion: Don’t Use a Raspberry Pi for That
Certainly agree that the Raspberry Pi's SD card is unsuitable as a boot device if you have any issues with power failures or voltage regulation. You can boot from a USB but by the time you pay for the USB drive you are in the same price range as other Micro computers.
kevinsky··on Ask HN: Is LinkedIn valuable for job seekers?What have been your experiences?
I have twenty years in IT doing contracting and LinkedIn has been a great source of work. However the signal to noise ratio is getting worse and I no longer read the posts due to all the low quality content. For a recruiter it's great to be able to mass mail your search results when trying to fill a position. It's no different than the other job search sites in that a majority of the contacts I get from recruiters are for the wrong type of work, wrong technology or pay too low. I don't bother trying to explain that I did .Net many years ago but don't do that now because most recruiters have no idea of what .Net or Angular or a SIEM is anyway.
kevinsky··on [dead]
Looks like click bait. Nowhere is there a clear link to how this drive will cut a Mars transit to 45 days (not the 5 days the title here states). Nuclear drives in space could solve a lot of problems. Building a compact controlled fission device is a bit of a challenge and getting it into space safely every time is another.
kevinsky··on Ask HN: Have you set up a procedure to disclose your passwords in case of death?
Bitwarden has an emergency contact feature if you have a premium membership. My wife and our lawyer have emergency access. They can request it anytime. If I approve they have access right away or if I reject it is denied. If I cannot or do not take action access is granted after five days. It's well thought out and a nice feature for $10/year https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/
kevinsky··on Too Clever by Half
Sort of lost the point when the author starting comparing coyotes and raccoons to financial misdealing's
kevinsky··on Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
In Canada contractors who work for the recruiters who supply resources to the Canadian government can expect these kind of rates: Experienced DBA ~$80/hour System Analyst/Platform Analyst ~100/hour Security Assessor or Practitioner from $115 to $125/hour

Front end developers who know a JavaScript framework, Power BI developers and anyone with cloud experience are in demand at top rates.

Then there are the gold ring jobs that pay over $200/hour. An example might be a subject matter expert on deploying Splunk, CyberArc or Sailpoint at an enterprise level. Usually you are working for a name brand consulting firm.

The recruiters add 30% to your rate and pay you net 30. Direct contracts with the government are possible but tend to be more short term

kevinsky··on How to Not Get Hit by Cars
These are all excellent tips that make you think about situations on the road that are riskier than you may think. The recommendations about having lights front and back, using a reflective vest and not riding on the sidewalks are very practical
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